


You've Walked For Many Years

by Emma_Please



Series: In Flight, We Prevail [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Azula and Ozai are really only mentioned they don't speak, Fire Nation (Avatar), Gen, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, so is zhao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:47:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24436114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emma_Please/pseuds/Emma_Please
Summary: Azula is born beneath the red sun and the people worship her for it, murmuring about the blessings of Agni. Zuko is born in the dead of the night and no one but his mother knows why exactly he was born so wrong.Or in which the Fire Nation believes in birth during daylight and Zuko is blessed by Agni in a way that is distinctly inhuman.
Relationships: Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Ursa & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: In Flight, We Prevail [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764784
Comments: 17
Kudos: 616





	You've Walked For Many Years

When Azula is born the sun is a bright red blaze, high in the sky. Ursa labors for hours and Azula cries righteously, not even quieting when the healers place her in her mother’s arms. The people cheer and celebrate, as whispers run rampant through the lower districts of how the daughter of Prince Ozai must truly be blessed by Agni to be born under such a powerful ray of light. She is the one, they say, arms held aloft and heads tilted, bodies curled reverentially. 

_ Not like the firstborn,  _ they don’t say,  _ not like the boy who was born in the dead of the night too quickly- too silently. Agni has not graced him with any blessings.  _

Ursa knows this all anyway- when Zuko was born the moon was but a sliver in the sky, and the night had been so dark the healers had lit eight lanterns, both to see and to ward off the strange chill that had settled upon them. His birth had been quick and silent, and as she’d laid there panting in exertion dread had crept into her heart- he had not cried. Not even a whimper and Ursa had felt breathless as if the floor had dropped away from beneath her.  _ Not my son,  _ she’d thought as she’d reached for him,  _ not my Zuko.  _ The healers had handed his tiny form over, bowing their heads and dutifully saying nothing of how Ozai was not present for the birth of his first child. 

But damn Ozai- this was her son, her baby, her little one who was not breathing and oh how Ursa had hunched over his frail body as if to protect him from malicious intent. She’d prayed, tears kept valiantly at bay and mouth set into a firm line; she would not cry, not until she was away from the eyes lingering upon both her and her pale son. 

_ Please,  _ she’d plead,  _ by Agni’s mercy, not my boy, not my beloved Zuko.  _

And for all that the citizens of the Fire Nation and Ozai himself claim that Azula had been blessed by Agni at birth, they do not know what Ursa knows-  _ they have not felt what Ursa has felt.  _

They were not there as Zuko’s cold body had warmed, a flickering flame that had shot through her like an inferno. They had not felt his fingers twitch and his chest rise sharply with the first breath. They had not felt the rigidity leave his body as she had and they had not seen the pink return to his cheeks. The healers had sprung forward when Zuko had taken his first cry but Ursa had steadfastly refused to give him over, normally gentle eyes steely as she’d glared them down. In that moment, stripped of all her regality, one healer had said that Ursa had closely resembled a mother dragon than a woman exhausted by labor. 

So Ursa knows, knows what Ozai is blind to and what Iroh seems to have gleaned from years of observing her son, what the Fire Lord Azulon cannot recognize. Azula was born beneath the red sun, yes, but it was Zuko, a firebender born under Tui’s domain, who had prospered despite it all. 

Ursa just wishes that he could have been spared all the suffering she is sure he will face in his life. 

There is a belief, a  _ superstition _ , in the Fire Nation, that those born during the day would grow up healthy and strong, destined to live good lives and prosper in their respective fields. It is encouraged for women to give birth under the sun, so that Agni may bless their children as the golden warm rays of light touch upon their skins for the first time.  _ Your child has truly been acknowledged by the spirits,  _ the priests say to these lucky folk, words imbued with a grave sense of importance that leaves people feeling as if they are of some sort of notability. 

Those born under a red sun are even more exalted, praised to the spirit world and back.  _ Destined for greatness and set to become legendary.  _ The school books are filled with tales of fabled warriors of old, all especially born under crimson suns. The Fire Nation children are taught that to be born under such a momentous sign is to be immediately respected and honored. 

The less said about those born during the night the better.  _ Weak, frail, unlikely to live for long.  _ It’s considered such a shame if a child is born under the moon for they all know that the babe will not survive and if they do they will not amount to much. Parents cry when such a thing happens to them, and the priests tut and shake their heads at the mothers-  _ if only you had given birth just a few hours later then all this could have been avoided,  _ and the women nod and tremble, infused with guilt at what they have done  _ (at what is surely not their fault) _ . 

_ The Fire Nation seems to have forgotten that both Avatar Roku and Fire Lord Sozin were born just as the sun had set beneath the horizon, replaced by the full moon. But then again, perhaps it had all gone just as Sozin had hoped it would.  _

Zuko has known his place in the world from the moment he began to speak- bottom of the food chain and a freak. Everyone takes great satisfaction of continuously reminding Zuko of just how lucky he is to be alive, from the stern scolding of his tutors to the rumors of the palace staff. Father never deigns to glance his way and mother… memories of mother seem as ephemeral and duplicitous as the tricks of the mind played upon those who stumble through the desert. Uncle Iroh tries his best to fill the hole left in her absence but he is a man who has lost a son and Zuko loathes to add to his grief. 

Nevermind that there’s something distinctly  _ wrong  _ with Zuko; wrong in the way that he feels safer sleeping beneath the bed than he does on it; wrong in the way that he skulks and lurks in the shadows, always awake just before sunrise but still sleepy during the day; wrong in the way that Zuko can feel like the fire that crackles and pops beneath his skin, a second skin; wrong in the way that sometimes he wishes he could reach out and snap his teeth around his father’s neck, the distinct feeling of  _ prey.  _ Zuko knows none of these signs are of a well-adjusted boy so he tamps down the urge to scratch at the walls and leap out of his own body. 

_ The one time his self-control falters his father looks at him for the first time in years and brands ‘respect’ onto his face in the form of a fiery hand gently laid upon his cheek, a mockery of an affectionate gesture that reminds him achingly of his mother.  _

Uncle Iroh spends much of his time on the ship playing Pai sho and attempting to convince Zuko that none of this is his fault, that Ozai never should have done what he did. Guilt rolls off him in waves but Zuko does not tell him that the only thing he feels is an all-consuming rage, that he would love nothing more than for them to turn this ship around so Zuko can sink nails into Ozai’s smug face and remind him that  _ he is the second son, that at the end of the day his soul is worthless and his judgment has come to pass- that they have found him sorely lacking and so he must bear the burden of burning for all eternity.  _

Zuko thinks perhaps he should be worried and afraid but the unbearable feeling of being trapped has intensified, and any patience he may have had has fizzled away pitifully, leaving him snarling and terrifyingly quiet at times. Uncle keeps a keen eye on him at all times and steps in every time it looks like Zuko would love nothing more than to put his dual Dao swords where they don’t belong.

“I worry about you, nephew,” Iroh murmurs, watching him with that look in his eyes that reminds Zuko of the fact that his tea-loving uncle had once been a greatly successful general fighting in a war. “You have not been yourself lately.” 

And how is Zuko to explain this to his uncle? How is he supposed to explain the fury and the malice he feels? How is he supposed to explain to his uncle that there has always been something just a little off with him that only his mother had ever seemed to understand? 

“It’s nothing,” He replies instead, golden stare never straying from Iroh’s own. “Absolutely nothing.” A strange choking feeling threatens to suffocate him in the face of Iroh’s disheartenment but Zuko pushes the sensation down and valiantly tries not to feel as though his uncle is pulling him apart and stitching him back together. 

_ I am not whole,  _ he thinks breathlessly,  _ Agni what have you done to me? How have I angered you so?  _

Agni, of course, doesn’t respond to his plea but his unnerving habits become worse and knowing no one will react well to the deep scratches made into the wooden wall of his room, Zuko throws a tapestry over them and hides his chipped nails behind his back, feeling as though he’s missing something vital to his very being. Iroh’s looks of concern increase and then one day, one particularly bad day, Zhao comes to visit and Zuko loses his proverbial shit. 

It storms the whole night and in response the waves rise and crash noisily, tossing the ship this way and that, carelessly violent. Zuko stands beneath the torrent of rain and stays largely out of the way, near the railing where he can scan the dark waters for something not even he knows. The cold settles into his bones quickly enough but Zuko is stuck entranced, the ferocity of the sea calling to him, urging him to come closer, to dive in and explore the hidden depths where no man had dared tread, not even those water benders. Before Zuko can tip over, Iroh drags him back by his shirt and throws him into his room and tells him to stay, and as much as Zuko hates being ordered around he’s suddenly unsettled. He wakes up the next morning with a headache the size of Ozai’s ego and a congested nose- it’s the first time he’s been sick since he was eight and Zuko despises feeling vulnerable  _ (Zuko should be unharmed, he should be untouched, no one can break through a dragon’s thick hide-).  _ It is on this day that Zhao makes his impromptu visit. 

The insufferable man struts and postures and the pervasive sense of something amiss rears its head once more and Zuko is hard-pressed to control his reaction to it. He never knows exactly what happens but he blacks out and wakes up Agni knows how many hours later floating on a loose board in the middle of the sea. Zuko’s head feels muggy and he knows he has at least two bruised ribs. There’s a cut on his throat that’s bleeding sluggishly and when Zuko runs his fingers along its seam he can tell that he should be dead- he feels like someone knelt him down execution-style and slit his throat but he is alive and that shouldn’t be possible. 

Laying next to him, a good chunk of his neck missing is Zhao. His body has begun to rot just slightly signaling the passing of time and instead of feeling disgusted as he knows he should, all Zuko feels is a hungering void in the pit of his stomach and when he swipes his tongue across his teeth the overwhelming taste of iron makes itself known. Zuko looks closer at Zhao’s wound, sees jaggedly ripped edges, and knows that it was he who killed the man. There is no panic, no sense of disquiet- all Zuko does is silently tip the corpse into the sea and watch as it bobs up and down, face down. It’s hard to feel anything for Zhao and a tiny part of Zuko grins at a job well done. The human part of him is unsure of what to feel- there is no guilt. 

Without his deceased companion to keep him company, Zuko finds himself drifting. The sea stretches out farther than the eyes can see and the sky is the same endless blue. He feels as though he’s stuck in a loop as if the sky is a mirror and at times Zuko must shut his eyes for fear of becoming nauseous from both the rocking of the plank and the glare of the sun. He knows he should feel powerful, that he should covet the sun’s energy, and channel it into his flame but all he feels is exhaustion. Lethargy hits him like a tidal wave, drowning him under, and it takes far too long for Zuko to realize that he truly cannot breathe. 

When Zuko wakes he’s lying on a hard stone surface, back aching and fingers spasming. Behind the confusion and pain, there is an overwhelming sense of apprehension. Zuko rolls over and keens in discomfort as the movement pulls on his aching muscles, all the while eyeing the grey stone-covered ground where he has been deposited. Try as he might, he cannot see nor hear the sea- it is as though it has vanished,  _ or perhaps it never existed outside of his imagination but then what about Zhao?  _

Looming over him though is a mountain taller and more majestic than anything he has ever seen. Zuko marvels at it, struck speechless by the sheer presence of it, by the almost unmistakable energy thrumming from it. For a brief moment, Zuko is reminded of Uncle Iroh but he banishes that thought quickly enough, drawn back by the pull of something as indomitable as this. The little rocks that are digging into his hands are just beginning to hurt, so Zuko pushes himself off the ground quickly, stare never straying. He stumbles, once, twice, gets his balance back by the third attempt to walk. Instead of heading down, as he knows he must, Zuko begins to climb the slope of the mountain, using stray boulders to help keep himself standing. At some point, he stops forging his own random path and finds an actual one that seems well worn, smoother, and not as wild. 

It ends halfway up the mountain at the mouth of a humongous cave. Zuko flinches back from it’s hungering void and nearly falls back down the path, just managing to clumsily catch himself upon the wall of the entrance. There’s something here, he knows, something that dwells deep in this cavern that has not left it for thousands of years. When Zuko turns to look behind him he sees that there is a forest that extends past the ground, spanning for many miles. Dark clouds hang above the trees and somewhere high above there’s the crackle of lightning and the bellowing of booming thunder. Zuko wonders if he should brave the rain but he can still feel the sickness of before in his bones and decides that as much as he doesn’t appreciate it, he must venture into the cave for shelter. 

There’s a part of Zuko, the part that flourished beneath uncle’s training and Captain Ji’s lessons, that urges him to go back down the mountain, that the trepidation he feels is case enough to step away from this unknown place- that Zuko is systematically ignored  _ and it is only later, much later, when it is far too late, that he wonders why it had been so easy to let go of his normally ever-present wariness.  _

The cave is arid, abnormally so, and so deep that as soon as the light of the outside fades away to inky black he tries to light a small flame within the palm of his hand. Nothing happens. Zuko stares at his palm, flabbergasted, and finally realizes that the hollow feeling in his body is because he cannot feel his chi. Now that his mind has been drawn to the troubling topic in question it is all he can seem to think about. Every movement that was once graceful is now clumsy, and as if paying attention to it has made it stronger Zuko’s motor functions quickly grow stunted and worse. He finds himself down on his hands and knees, breath coming out in short stuttering gasps as his hands scramble through the darkness, leading him blindly forward. For a brief, hysterical moment, Zuko wishes he were a badgermole, before the thought vanishes right as his hands hit empty space and his body is jolted into freefall. 

On the fall down to who knows where, Zuko does a myriad of different things; he screams in fear; he prays to Agni for mercy and a painless death; he remembers Iroh and his mother and Azula, back when she was a child and her favorite thing was to be picked up by her big brother. Finally, Zuko thinks,  _ in flight, we prevail  _ just as his body makes an impact with the ground. Unlike the bone-shattering sensation that he is expecting, Zuko simply feels as if the breath has been punched out of him. Something is pressing into his body uncomfortably and it takes Zuko a moment to realize it feels like sand. It takes him an even longer moment to realize that there is a searing light shining on his closed eyes, painting his inner eyelids in smears of orange and yellow and red. 

When he opens them, all he sees is gold which seems to go on for infinity- he has somehow found his way into a desert with the open, cloudless sky bright above him. Remembering the fall Zuko looks up, wildly twisting and turning to see if this is all a fake, but the sky above him remains intact with no visible tears. The sand shifts beneath his feet and Zuko wiggles his toes, realizing abruptly that he has no shoes and that his clothes are hanging off his lean frame. His hair is a wild mess atop his head, shaggy and falling to his shoulders- when Zuko runs his fingers through the locks he expects to find them greasy but it seems as though nothing has changed. His wrists are so thin he can circle his pointer finger and thumb around them and still have space left; his nails are chipped and yellow. There is no part of his skin that isn’t covered in granules of stubborn sand. 

There is a warm breeze upon his neck and Zuko sighs, spins around, and promptly freezes. Towering before him is a creature, serpentine and ferocious, fangs bared into a mockery of a grin and intelligent brown eyes watching his every move. Zuko recognizes, somewhere deep in the back of his mind, that this is a dragon. One with thick golden scales which shimmer in the high afternoon sun and with wings such a deep blue they almost look black, even in the light of day. 

“You’ve been walking for many years,” A voice says so deep the sand rumbles underfoot. “I have been  _ waiting  _ for many years.” 

Zuko falls to his knees, just as he did all those days ago before his father, and bows his head. He starts to speak but words fail him. “I… I don’t understand,” 

The dragon huffs, twisting its giant head to stare at the horizon for a brief moment. “There is very little you humans do understand.” Its wings tremble and enormous dark grey clouds begin to creep their way into view. There is no warning before a fat raindrop plops its way into Zuko’s hair and drips its way down the line of his nose. It rains in the desert which in itself is unheard of but it is unlike anything he has ever seen before- the sand remains the same burnished surface as before. 

“Did you know,” The dragon begins again, gaze boring a hole into Zuko’s head. “That you are in the spirit world, young Zuko?” 

Zuko stills, eyes snapping open ( _ when had they fallen shut is he so tired-)  _ to stare at the being before him. “No,” He responds. “No, I was not aware of that.” 

“Did you not think it was strange that you had no issue ignoring all the warning signs being placed before you- the rain, the blocking of your chi, the cave so dark you were blind?” The creature flicks its eyes over Zuko’s figure. “I have been leading you here for many years, slowly but surely. Before today I thought you would sooner go mad than finally arrive in my domain.” 

“Leading me here?” Zuko asks, still on his knees, still so terrified. 

“You belong to me,” The dragon replies pleased as can be, mouth spreading once more into an unnerving smile. “You have belonged to me for many years.” 

And suddenly, as if he has been doused with ice water, Zuko whispers, “Agni,” and the dragon turns its disquieting eyes back to him once more.

“So it seems your mother didn’t keep everything from you.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This was an attempt to get back into writing. This is also the first time I've written for Avatar: The Last Airbender so I hope everyone is in character. It's really just a lot of set up. I do have the next installment in mind though so we'll see where that goes.


End file.
